“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. . . . And God said, “Let there be light in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. (God) also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.” From the Book of Genesis, The Holy Bible, New International Version, Zondervan Bible Publishers.
As popular as the weather, astrology is a global, omnipresent, mainstream endeavor, with substantial media coverage and commercial industry. Nearly every one has opinions about it or has heard of it. The bevy of astrologers offering services confirms the public curiosity, acceptance and commercial support of this vocation, hobby and entertainment. Syndicated columns in newspapers, magazines and publications, televised programs and spots, tele-services and info-mercials, internet and web sites, plus the myriad advisors, professionals and professional associations, books, CD-ROM's and disks, comprise the large astrology industry. On a global, world-wide basis, astrology is practiced and performed in a few distinct, but interrelated, methodological forms across the entirety of the world's peoples.
In turn, astrologers ardently study and discuss their subject. Assorted titles are available at most libraries, with many volumes being carried by America's largest booksellers and computer program vendors. The use of astrology permeates the personal realm as numerous persons and peoples use astrology for diverse purposes and reasons. From “getting to know” someone, to the decisions shaping nations and business, one hears frequently of the use of astrology by people, from President's wives to stock selection experts. “What is your sign?” is a question often heard.
But this interest in astrology is undermined by the methods of the consolidated astrology industry. Unbeknownst to the public at large, the current and exclusive methods for the determination of astrological information, to discover and render the “signs” under which a person is allegedly born, are factitious or erroneous. For each or any astrological component and at each and every epoch in time, the zodiac positions determined, rendered or stated by these prior arts are wrong as to astrological content.
Astrology has long been practiced, with peoples over the course of time using its products and services for interpretation, recreation, meditation, analysis, fortune-telling, games, augury and entertainment. Now astrology is used in many applications including psychology, healing, planning, investment, diet, hygiene, travel, interpersonal relationships, self and God awareness. Astrology for the common individual first became popular last century, in tow with the advent of personal psychology. Earlier, astrology was practiced for nations, leaders, celebrities, omens, wars and welfare, or for past, present and future dates or events such as solstices and eclipses.
Up until the nineteenth century, our solar system was known to include only the planets up to Saturn. Ancient astrologers were the astronomers of yore and devised an interpretative system for the meaning of the planetary locations and interactions. Hence, just as alchemists were the forerunners of modern chemistry, astrologers were de facto the astronomers in times past. Yet, just as the chemists separated out from the alchemists, the astronomers parted ways with the astrologers.
The astronomers were concerned with the precise, tangible science of celestial mechanics, coming to renounce any interpretative arts, for lack of proven causality. This fissure continues today, overshadowing the vital error within the astrologers' fundamental methods. This dispute covers over the substantive issue at the heart of astrological inquiry: the current astrological methods return factitious, empirically false, phenomenologically inaccurate, zodiacal positions, leading to the larger consequence that all prior art artifacts, products and services misinform as well, given their erroneous component data.
Astrology evolved in its own course, having much about it that is sturdy. Historic progress through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries included new discoveries, such as the planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Astrologers assigned meaning to these new planets; astrology embraced these gifts from astronomy, with a resultant common presumption that astrology is as scientific as possible, if still questionable in effect.
Although the physics of astrology depict the heavens as circling the earth, the consequence of this fallacy is trivial, as pertains to the accuracy of the components moving across the zodiacal belt. So it is not a consequential fault for the astrologer to showcase the component positions as moving along the zodiacal circuit, with the earth as center. Moreover, this conveys the relativity from the subject's perspective. Ancient maps of the heavens, however, were as apt to be drawn from the vantage looking in on earth, with the order of the constellations, the zodiac included, then being reversed in order and directional motion, from the earth-centered, outward-looking, vantage. From their system perspective, the subject is in the opposite sign, and the sign order is reversed. See also Constellations. National Audubon Society Pocket Guide. ISBN 0-679-77998-1. Page 192.
Astrology, according to Webster's Dictionary, is “the divination of the supposed influences of the stars and planets on human affairs and terrestrial events by their positions and aspects”. The positions are of primary importance to the astrologer, since the aspects are found from the component positions, which must first be established correctly. Astrologer's reference sources are used to establish the zodiacal positions per the query inputs of time, date and earthly location. “One's horoscope is a map of the heavens at the time of one's birth, showing the position of the heavenly bodies in the ZODIAC”, according to The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia. However, these astrologer's resources, containing any of ephemerides (calendars of component zodiac positions), related look-up tables, instructions, algorithms and/or automated computations, engineer, or are themselves engineered to, empirically artificial positions. Nevertheless, the implicit and obvious assumption is that component data be of the empirically natural, zodiacal position of star, sign and symbol.
Neither the astrological community nor its commercial products and services utilize the concretely observable zodiacal positions. Thus, while the astrological community uniformly uses prior art systems, the public is not aware of this discrepancy from natural fact, especially as the various practiced forms of astrology imply or even assert that their methods are concrete. Moreover, what is not obvious is the magnitude and significance of systemic error, for its magnitude causes the data, the astrological artifacts rendered thereby and interpretative comments thereon, to be greatly comprised. The signs must be right and not corrupted.
Astrological methods, and hence their reference resources, processing apparatuses and systems, do not produce the invention's zodiacal positions and artifacts for the querist or for those who use astrology. If the error of prior art methods were but slight! Current methods essentially place every planet and angle in an incorrect zodiacal sign, or at a significantly incorrect degree within a sign, depending on the particular prior art astrological form, thus misleading the astrologer at each and every turn during assessment of a profiled disposition.
Indeed, when a Western astrologer says, for example, that in February 1998, Saturn is in Aries (per standard astrologer's ephemeris, e.g., Parker's Astrology, by J. and D. Parker, 1991, p.388), how should anyone using that reference know that this is naturally incorrect? Saturn was actually in the sign/constellation of Pisces at that time, see FIG. 4, for month, February 1998.
Aries is a cardinal, masculine fire sign, ruler of Mars, exalted by the Sun. In comparison, Pisces is a mutable, feminine water sign, ruler of Neptune (and by tradition, of Jupiter), exalted by Venus. These two signs, like all neighboring signs, are very different, with very distinct meanings for purposes and usages of interpretative astrology.
This falsification occurs not to just a single, isolated planet, but to each and every solar, lunar, planetary and axial component requisite to astrological purposes. The component data represented by all prior art methods, resources, apparatuses and systems consistently reveal empirically false zodiacal position/sign assignment and data. This systemic and persistent error is of catastrophic import because all astrological signs/positions change as a result. Products and services using prior art artifacts of position data will fully mislead any user's interpretation, information or entertainment.